Tag: worldbank

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I spent a bit more than a week in Kyrgyzstan, at the invitation of the Kyrgyz prime minister and on behalf of the World Bank, to start an open data readiness assessment and present and facilitate at the Kyrgyz Open Data Days.
Kyrgyzstan is a lower middle income country, with a parliamentary democracy. The people I met are frank, straightforward, and action oriented. Anything longer than 6 months seems to be perceived as long term. This meant that with the right introduction it was possible to arrange meetings with high level officials at short notice. Like arranging a meeting with a deputy minister during lunch for later that afternoon. I did not get to see anything really from the city or the country, except from what I could see from the car that brought me from one office building to another, and from hotel to conference center.


Press coverage of Prime Minister opening the Kyrgyzstan Open Data Days, and my name tag in cyrillic

Towards the end of my stay the Open Data Days took place, for which many other open data people from Moldova, Georgia, Russia, USA, UK, Germany and France came on behalf of the World Bank. It was good fun to meet them, and together we pulled off a good program to kick start open data (also see World Economic Forum blog) in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz government adopted an e-governance strategy only last week, and open data is part of that new strategy. Our visit was therefore very timely. The first morning was spent explaining open data and sharing experiences with the Kyrgyz prime minister and full cabinet attending, followed by good discussions in the afternoon when we zoomed in on a slightly more practical level. There was quite a bit of press interest, and I had the opportunity to get misquoted in the Kyrgyz press. The second day we did workshops with civil society organizations, and the business community, followed by a developer meet-up in the evening. Two more meetings on the last day completed my program, before the 10 hour flight back home.


Mountainview on a clear morning from my hotel room, and a group photo at the end of the Open Data Days

Bishkek is only a short distance from the mountains (the country’s highest peak is over 7000m), and on clear mornings form a great backdrop for the city. It was a snowy day when I left, so no views of the mountains as the plane took off. Instead I made triple selfies with Victoria from Moldova, and Vitaly from St. Petersburg in departures, as we were on the same flight back. Odd, spending a week 6000km away from home, and more or less no idea where you’ve been. I may return however in January and late spring, both for completing the assessment as well as providing ealry implementation support.

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After arriving in Kazachstan at 4AM, and a bit of rest, my first item on the schedule was key-noting at a roundtable of CIO and CTO level representatives of about a dozen CIS countries. The session was hosted at NITEC in the House of Ministries. The aim was to convey how open government data can be of value, and to provide a few starting points that the participants see possibilities to act on.


Dashboard of e-government metrics, in the hall of the House of Ministries

My World Bank colleagues Oleg Petrov and Mikhail Bunchuk presented the World Bank work, and the ways and instruments with which it can support open data efforts of the nations present.

Tair Sabyrgaliyev and Cornelia Amihalachioae presented the open data program of Kazachstan and the impressive e-government and open data work of Moldova (which I had opportunity to work on and experience first hand in 2012).

My own contribution was basically a compressed Open Data course, addressing the what, why and how. My slides are embedded below in both English and Russian. (During the session I used Russian slides.)

Also Cornelia Amihalachioae’s slides are shown below, that are well worth a read.